Issues of academic authorship pose few problems for philosophers or those in the humanities, yet raise a host of issues for medical researchers, engineers and scientists, where multiple authors is the norm and journal articles sometimes list hundreds of authors. At issue here are abstract questions about desert, as well as practical problems regarding the distribution of goods attached to authorship—tenure, prestige, research grants, etc. This paper defends a version of the author/contributor model, where the specific contributions of authors are described in a footnote, against other models of authorial attribution. Such a model offers the best guarantee that authors will get their due, as well as providing the most reliable protection against misconduct and fraud. The paper also arguesthat it is important for this model to be institutionalized across disciplinary boundaries as the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of research will inevitably bring discipline-specific authorial norms into conflict.

The current UN policy regarding free speech presents a philosophical dilemma between accepting the free speech provisions in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and exceptions carved out for hatred, hostility, and religious defamation. The Declaration should be understood to imply viewpoint neutrality and the exceptions for defamation are not viewpoint neutral. If the UN were to adopt J. S. Mill’s crucial distinctions between expression and performative speech, content and context, and mental states and the acts motivated by them, it would be clear that hatred, hostility, and defamation cannot be exceptions to viewpoint neutral free speech. If the heart of free speech is freedom especially for the thought we hate, then the UN should abandon its exceptions or abandon appeals to free speech. However, I will offer a strong reason that it should not do the latter.

Compensation has received a great deal of attention from social scientists. Characteristically, they have been concerned with the causes and effects of various compensation schemes. By contrast, few theorists have addressed the normative aspects of compensation. An exception is Elaine Sternberg, who offers in Just Business a comprehensive theory of compensation ethics. This paper critically examines her theory, and argues that the justification she gives for it fails. Its failure is instructive, however. The main argument Sternberg gives for her theory points in the direction of a different one. This, in turns, helps us to see what a justification of Sternberg’s theory must look like. While focused on Sternberg, this paper is of general interest. It identifies what are likely to be important positionsand arguments in debates about compensation ethics, and thus provides a jumping-off point for further research in this neglected area.

At their best, mottos help us cope by crystallizing attitudes, eliciting resolve, and guiding conduct. Mottos have moral significance when they allude to the virtues and reflect the character of individuals and groups. As such, they function in the moral space between abstract ethical theory and contextual moral judgment. I discuss personal mottos such as those of Isak Dinesen (“I will answer”) and group mottos such as found in social movements (“Think globally, act locally”), professions (“Above all, do no harm”), philosophy (“The personal is political”), and therapeutic groups like Alcoholics Anonymous (“One day at a time”).

This paper aims to demonstrate how philosophy and ethics shed light on professional ethics. One of the most important issues in professional ethics nowadays is to establish and justify rules to achieve and sustain good behavior in persons involved in specific activities. During the second half of the twentieth century, professional ethics became increasingly more important for philosophy, while the number of codes of ethics continues to grow. This exposition is based on some fundamental ethical concepts, like ‘end,’ ‘rule,’ ‘virtue,’ etc., some of which are taken from Alasdair MacIntyre’s thought.

I argue that the moral right to privacy is the moral right to consent to access by others to one’s personal information. Although this thesis is relatively simple and already implicit in considerations about privacy, it has, nevertheless, been overlooked by philosophers. In the paper, I present and defend my account of the moral right to privacy, respond to possible objections to it, and attempt to show its advantages over two recent accounts: one by Steve Matthews and the other by Adam Moore. I also offer reasons to think that my account can be assimilated into a broad range of fundamental ethical approaches (i.e., a variety of consequentialist,deontological, and natural law approaches). Given the number and variety of such approaches, however, I can only attempt to make a prima facie case for the adaptability of the proposed account.

In this essay, I argue that colleges and universities should permit hazing. I argue that if hazing is wrong, then it wrongs someone and if it wrongs someone then it violates someone’s right. Hazing does not violate someone’s right when the person who is hazed gives informed consent. I then argue that because hazing is permissible, colleges should permit it. I consider and respond to objections that hazing is wrong for reasons that are not right-based. Here I consider objections relating to deception, coercion, unnecessary harm, degradation, and exploitation. I also consider two more objections. First, hazing is wrong because it violates the colleges’ rights. Second, colleges need not permit hazing because they own the rights to the groups or the materials that the groups use and hence they may exercise their property rights in such a way as to make hazing wrong.

We experience anxiety because things may not turn out as we wish. Perhaps the problem is not located in the unfolding of events, but rather in the nature of the wishing. In this paper, I will argue that the Roman Stoics correctly analyzed the necessary conditions surrounding the arising of anxiety, and offered an effective prescription for the treatment and prevention of this disordered emotional state—a prescription that does not involve benzodiazepines such as Valium or Xanax, but one that holds out the promise of a more stable and enduring anxiolytic effect. Ultimately, anxiety can afflict only those whose desires are not rationally governed. There is little that anyone can do about the vicissitudes of the external world and the unraveling of events therein, but there is a great deal thata rational agent can do to manage the objects and direction of desire and aversion. Though not dispensed in tablet or capsule form, Stoic anxiolytics remain available without prescription and exhibit an extraordinarily benign side effect profile. They rarely cause weight gain, sexual dysfunction, or uncontrollable movements of the limbs. Physiological dependence is relatively rare—and not especially pernicious. Instead, Stoicism offers rationally grounded, proven psychological techniques for the gradual development of consistent self-mastery and emotional detachment from those facets of the human condition that tend to cause the most pervasive and unsettling forms of fear, anxiety, and avoidable disquiet.